Traditional direct mail articles take the form of an outer envelope containing one or more lettersheets, one or more reply devices and a business reply envelope. One or more of the enclosures can be personalized with the addressee's name, address and/or other demographic information. Direct mail articles have also been produced in the form of a single over-sized sheet printed on card stock that can be transmitted through the mail without an outer envelope or other wrapper. The over-sized sheet can be provided with a preformed business reply envelope and one or more reply devices. Direct mail articles of the self-mailing type are described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 08/449,345, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,797,541.
The over-sized format is particularly effective in promoting magazine subscriptions and the like, since the cover of a current edition or a specialized replica of the magazine's cover can be reproduced to attract the attention and appeal to the interest of the addressee as the incoming mail is being examined. Although the immediate impact of the over-sized self-mailer makes the format desirable, the information that can be provided by the sponsor of the mailing is limited by the fact that the single sheet has only the obverse of the cover page to provide relevant information or other copy to induce the addressee to favorably respond to the solicitation.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide a novel and improved direct mail article that is a self-mailer which has a plurality of pages for receiving printed fields and that is provided with a detachable business reply envelope and one or more integral detachable reply devices that can be inserted into the reply envelope, or alternatively, that can be used independently as reply postcards, all of which elements are produced from a single integral web or sheet of paper or printable stock.
It is another object of the invention to provide a direct mail article and a method for its manufacture that comprise a pair of large letter size or over-sized cover sheets joined along an intermediate fold line in the form of a brochure containing one or more interior sheets bound to the cover sheets, and that further includes a completely preformed business reply envelope that is detachably connected to an interior sheet and at least one reply device for use by the recipient, that can be detached from one of the cover or interior sheets.
A further object of the invention is to provide an efficient method for the mass production of a self-mailing direct mail article in the form of a brochure with one or more interior sheets from which a preformed reply envelope and at least one reply device can be removed for use by the recipient.
It is yet another important object of the invention to provide an improved direct mail article as described above that can be personalized with the recipient's name, address and/or other available demographic information in printed fields located on interior pages on the detachable reply devices and reply envelope, by means of a computer-directed (computer printer during printing of the web.